Armed with that, we turned to the Harvard plate stack in search for an
unnoticed nova outburst in the distant past. DASCH project provides access
to calibrated scans of the huge collection of sky patrol photographic plates
obtained over a century with Harvard astrographs located in both hemispheres
[1]}. The area of the sky where GaSS 1-26 is located
has not yet been included in the available DASCH data releases (1 to 6). We
have been however granted access to the data for the area of sky around GaSS
1-26 prior to their publication in DASCH DR7, currently planned for July
2021. This led to some initial excitement when two plates for June 6, 1908
and September 17, 1916 were logged as reporting GaSS 1-26 much brighter than
at other epochs and at a blue magnitude compatible with a nova outburst.
This pair of observations belongs to a time interval with very few Harvard
plates covering the GaSS 1-26 position and being deep enough to have
recorded it in quiescence (we measured it at \(B\) =15.4 during our search for
flickering, cf. Table REF , thus quite faint for the
photographic means of the time). To assess if any nova outburst had really
affected GaSS 1-26 in 1908 and/or 1916, we asked for and were provided with
a scan of both plates (Edward Los, private communication). Inspection of
these scans reveals the presence of artefacts at the astrometric position
for GaSS 1-26, in the form of ink from a pen marking for the 1908 plate and
a scratch on the emulsion for the 1916 one. Therefore, no nova outburst
affected GaSS 1-26 in either 1908 and 1916. Even if the search on Harvard
plates for unnoticed past nova outbursts has not been fruitful, it should be
extended to other photographic plate archives, although not many cover the
southern hemisphere at faint magnitudes and over protracted periods of
times, and even less have preserved the plates in good conditions and
provide access to them in person or via digitized scans.
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